We argue that the cost of rural–urban migration may act as an effective entry deterrence for successful migration to the urban sector. This cost results in some form of price rationing as the cash holding of a typical rural household falls short of the required cost. We demonstrate that certain endogenous forces will mesh in with the government policies to generate cumulative improvements in terms of trade in favour of the rural sector. Such improvements in terms of trade are shown to close the gap between the cost and the cash holding of a rural household. As a result, the rate of migration is positively related to the improvements in terms of trade in favour of agriculture. On the other hand, the terms of trade are shown to be inversely related to the rate of migration from agriculture. We establish, for the first time to the best of our understanding, that an endogenously driven and self-sustaining migration cycle would emerge from the rich dynamics involving migration flows and intersectoral terms of trade. We also demonstrates the possibility of a complex dynamics that can characterize the rural–urban migration and the attending development process. One can argue, on the basis of this type of complex dynamics, development process can be unpredictable and highly fragile. In other words, the principles of econophysics can offer an important new framework to understand labour flows in a complex society. JEL: J31, C78

In recent years, enormous progress has been made with respect to the identification of somatic mutations that contribute to cancer development. Mutation types range from small substitutions to large structural genomic rearrangements, including complex reshuffling of the genome. Sets of mutations in individual cancer genomes may show specific signatures, which can be provoked by both exogenous and endogenous forces. One of the most remarkable mutation patterns observed in human cancers involve massive rearrangement of just a few chromosomal regions. This phenomenon has been termed chromothripsis and appears widespread in a multitude of cancer types. Chromothripsis provides a way for cancer to rapidly evolve through a one-off massive change in genome structure as opposed to a gradual process of mutation and selection. This chapter focuses on the origin, prevalence and impact of chromothripsis and related complex genomic rearrangements during cancer development.

In vitro study of the impact of mechanical tension on the dermal fibroblast phenotype in the context of skin wound healing

Building on prior research into the 4-H movement, the role of the agricultural extension service, and rural life and school reform in the United States in the early twentieth century, this article examines the history of the 4-H movement during the Progressive Era, with a particular focus on uncovering the role that records and recordkeeping played in the clubs for rural girls and boys. The research documents the activities and events within the early 4-H movement where written literacy had a role, analyzes the idea of the 4-H movement as an agent and a sponsor of written literacy, and uncovers the view of the world that the 4-H movement was imparting through its early record books. In doing so, the article documents some of the key exogenous and endogenous forces at play during the Progressive Era that had an impact on children's everyday information creation practices.

Revisiting crisis, change and institutions in the tropical forests: The multifunctional transition in Australia's Wet Tropics

This paper argues that game-theoretic approach is incomplete for institutional studies, because comparative institutions as well as institutional changes involve a possibility of multiple equilibria. In order to solve the common knowledge problem, this paper proposes to unify game theoretic thought with an analysis of public representations/propositions to summarize salient features of the recursive/emergent states of play. From this perspective the paper tries to reconcile differences in three accounts of institutions: endogenous outcome, exogenous rules and constitutive rules accounts. Then, the unified approach is applied to comparative and historical cases of the Tokugawa Japan and the Qing China. Specifically it sheds new light into the coalitional nature of Tokugawa Baku-Han regime nesting the fundamental Samurai-village pact as well as the tendency toward decentralization of political violence and fiscal competence to the provincial level toward the end of the Qing China. From these new historical interpretations, endogenous strategic forces and associated public propositions leading to institutional changes through the Meiji Restoration and the Xinhai Revolution are identified and compared.

Economists often identify a reduction in the share of agricultural employment as a quantitative indication of the economic growth of nations. But this process did not occur in earnest in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) until the 1980s and to some extent in Japan until well into the mid-20th century. Were extractive political regimes, commonly regarded as the primary drivers of economic performance, solely responsible for the lateness of these developments? This article deals with this question from a strategic perspective by examining the interactions between the polity and the economy in both countries. It begins by characterizing the complementary nature of the peasant-based economy and the agrarian-tax state in premodern China and Japan. It then describes how endogenous strategic forces evolved from among the intermediate organizations in each country to challenge the incumbent dynastic ruler in response to the commercialization of the peasant-based economy on one hand and the fiscal and military weakening of the agrarian-tax state on the other. The article then introduces a three-person game model between a ruler and two challenging organizations, derive conditions for multiple equilbria and their comparative static. The analytical results help to identify the endogenous strategic forces that led the Meiji Restoration and the Xinhai Revolution to move from a premodern state of play to nation-state building and modern economic regimes in each country.

Building on prior research into the 4-H movement, the role of the agricultural extension service, and rural life and school reform in the United States in the early twentieth century, this article examines the history of the 4-H movement during the Progressive Era, with a particular focus on uncovering the role that records and recordkeeping played in the clubs for rural girls and boys. The research documents the activities and events within the early 4-H movement where written literacy had a role, analyzes the idea of the 4-H movement as an agent and a sponsor of written literacy, and uncovers the view of the world that the 4-H movement was imparting through its early record books. In doing so, the article documents some of the key exogenous and endogenous forces at play during the Progressive Era that had an impact on children’s everyday information creation practices.

We examine (i) the extent of Combined code (2010) impact in the Greek soft law (SEV code, 2011) and (ii) the adoption of an overlapping set (between the two codes) of best practice provisions in Greece. Using the ‘content analysis’ method, both on the content of the codes and on the companies’ disclosures, we find that while on the one hand exogenous forces trigger the development and adoption of a code, in line with the UK’s, on the other hand the endogenous forces tend to avoid the compliance with that ‘exogenous practices’. Our results support the idea that the Greek national code should be reshaped, in order to fit the different country’s characteristics. This conclusion indicates that a ‘hybrid’ code could be more efficient when it captures both the endogenous and exogenous forces equivalently.

Soon after the establishment of the Eurozone it became obvious that the structural differences between member states would not abate, as expected, but rather gradually widen. Although part of the problem can be attributed to the enlargement process, it also relates to asymmetric effects of the common currency and to diverging economic policies. This paper discusses the literature which associates the economic characteristics of EMU with arguments of the optimum currency area (OCA) theory and asks for missing capstones that would meliorate EMU to eventually resemble an OCA. As potential candidates for such building blocks, some sort of fiscal union and lender of last resort may qualify, drawing on the experiences of other currency unions and federal states. The financial and debt crisis has revealed that the endogenous forces within a currency union may be too slow to absorb the shocks originating from the crisis. For a currency union to survive in such a situation it is all the more important that the OCA criteria are met and/or that complementary institutions are in place. However, as actual developments in the Eurozone reveal, the political process of approaching an OCA is piecemeal rather than comprehensive and prompt.

Abstract This study is an empirical approach to answering the question: are there any universal factors that account for the origin, diffusion and persistence of corruption in human societies? The paper enquires whether the perception of corruption in politics and economics can be tackled as a form of cultural adaptation, driven by exogenous and endogenous forces. These are respectively: freedom of access and management of economic resources, and the pressures towards human grouping. Following the analytical insights of cultural theory, developed by Mary Douglas and later Aaron Wildavsky, variation is introduced through the ways in which corruption is perceived through the different behavioral and cultural biases that prevail in societies. This research introduces a cross-country comparative analysis of 57 countries attempting to test quantitatively whether institutional pressure and emphasis towards social grouping are correlated with corruption perception at country levels.

Abstract: The article brings together two novels that were published twenty years apart: Percival Everett’s Walk Me to the Distance and Wounded. Although, of course, the two stories are marked by the different social concerns of their different periods, there is a clear thematic continuity that links them. Beyond each story’s particular journey, each is haunted by violence under several guises. No story speaks its author’s words or mind-set directly. Art is no didactic exercise. The article suggests, nevertheless, that fiction is a confrontation between endogenous forces (the author’s own stand) and various exogenous forces, ways, and attitudes the author declines to share.

Mechanical stress is a critical signal affecting morphogenesis and growth and is caused by a large variety of environmental stimuli such as touch, wind, and gravity in addition to endogenous forces generated by growth. On the basis of studies dating from the early 19th century, the plant mechanical sensors and response components related to gravity can be divided into two types in terms of their temporal character: sensors of the transient stress of reorientation (phasic signaling) and sensors capable of monitoring and responding to the extended, continuous gravitropic signal for the duration of the tropic growth response (tonic signaling). In the case of transient stress, changes in the concentrations of ions in the cytoplasm play a central role in mechanosensing and are likely a key component of initial gravisensing. Potential candidates for mechanosensitive channels have been identified in Arabidopsis thaliana and may provide clues to these rapid, ionic gravisensing mechanisms. Continuous mechanical stress, on the other hand, may be sensed by other mechanisms in addition to the rapidly adapting mechnaosensitive channels of the phasic system. Sustaining such long-term responses may be through a network of biochemical signaling cascades that would therefore need to be maintained for the many hours of the growth response once they are triggered. However, classical physiological analyses and recent simulation studies also suggest involvement of the cytoskeleton in sensing/responding to long-term mechanoresponse independently of the biochemical signaling cascades triggered by initial graviperception events.

Abstract AbstractThis paper seeks to investigate the inner mechanics of policy change. It aims to discover how ideas enter the political arena, and how endogenous forces within the policy making environment transform ideas into new policies. The central hypothesis is that in times of crisis, new ideas emanate from a number of change agents, but in order for any of these ideas to enter the institutional environment, one specific agent of change must be present: the political entrepreneur. Without political entrepreneurs, ideational change, and subsequent policy change, would not occur. The paper sets out a framework for identifying and explaining the endogenous drivers of policy change, and then tests this framework on two case studies, from two countries.

Abstract This article examines the profound transformation market reforms have brought to the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) rural grassroots organizations. Focusing on the political rise of private entrepreneurs and other economically successful individuals who recently obtained village Party secretary appointments in a north China county, the article explores their differing promotion channels, power bases, political resources and motivations to take up the CCP's grassroots leadership position. It demonstrates that the variety among the new entrepreneurial Party secretaries – from large factory owners to de facto farm managers – shaped the network resource, factional affiliation and socio-political capital they rely upon to exercise their newly attained power. It also shows the crucial role played by community-based endogenous forces in transmitting the power of economic liberalization into dynamics for the reshuffling of the Communist Party leadership at the grassroots level.

We present a novel approach to modeling cell spreading, and use it to reveal a potentially central mechanism regulating focal adhesion maturation in various cell phenotypes. Actin bundles that span neighboring focal complexes at the lamellipodium-lamellum interface were assumed to be loaded by intracellular forces in proportion to bundle length. We hypothesized that the length of an actin bundle (with the corresponding accumulated force at its adhesions) may thus regulate adhesion maturation to ensure cell mechanical stability and morphological integrity. We developed a model to test this hypothesis, implementing a "top-down" approach to simplify certain cellular processes while explicitly incorporating complexity of other key subcellular mechanisms. Filopodial and lamellipodial activities were treated as modular processes with functional spatiotemporal interactions coordinated by rules regarding focal adhesion turnover and actin bundle dynamics. This theoretical framework was able to robustly predict temporal evolution of cell area and cytoskeletal organization as reported from a wide range of cell spreading experiments using micropatterned substrates. We conclude that a geometric/temporal modeling framework can capture the key functional aspects of the rapid spreading phase and resultant cytoskeletal complexity. Hence the model is used to reveal mechanistic insight into basic cell behavior essential for spreading. It demonstrates that actin bundles spanning nascent focal adhesions such that they are aligned to the leading edge may accumulate centripetal endogenous forces along their length, and could thus trigger focal adhesion maturation in a force-length dependent fashion. We suggest that this mechanism could be a central "integrating" factor that effectively coordinates force-mediated adhesion maturation at the lamellipodium-lamellum interface.

The present paper, of descriptive method, is proposed to measure the behavior related to sustainable consumption and social capital, evaluating the existence of relations between these concepts. The quantitative research was conducted in the city of Caxias do Sul, Brazil, with a sample of Business Management students from a local College. It was used descriptive statistics, factor analysis, linear regression and analysis of variance. The results showed that the respondents have not practiced sustainable consumption yet. The relation between the level of environmental awareness in consumer behavior to the level of social capital of the respondents pointed out the variables related to proactivity in the social diversity and tolerance, as significant in the process of social construction that leads to conscious consumption. Moreover, on the evaluation of capital, the variables related to participation in the community had lower levels of capital, while the variables related to the work environment have the best performances. The analyses of the research findings consider the socio-cultural aspects of the study area and it is therefore seeking to build relationships that are aligned with the specific and the endogenous forces of the site.

Spatial patterns observed in ecosystems have traditionally been attributed to exogenous processes. Recently, ecologists have found that endogenous processes also have the potential to create spatial patterns. Yet, relatively few studies have attempted to examine the combined effects of exogenous and endogenous processes on the distribution of organisms across spatial and temporal scales. Here we aim to do this, by investigating whether spatial patterns of under-story tree species at a large spatial scale (18 ha) influences the spatial patterns of ground foraging ant species at a much smaller spatial scale (20 m by 20 m). At the regional scale, exogenous processes (under-story tree community) had a strong effect on the spatial patterns in the ground-foraging ant community. We found significantly more Camponotus noveboracensis, Formica subsericae, and Lasius alienus species in black cherry (Prunis serotine Ehrh.) habitats. In witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana L.) habitats, we similarly found significantly more Myrmica americana, Formica fusca, and Formica subsericae. At smaller spatial scales, we observed the emergence of mosaic ant patches changing rapidly in space and time. Our study reveals that spatial patterns are the result of both exogenous and endogenous forces, operating at distinct scales.

The concept of social capital related to the economic development of regions and countries began to achieve significance in the 1990s. Nevertheless, the measurement of social capital still faces some difficulties, because it requires a combination of statistical measures to find results that are reliable for the reality of the given community. The present study aims to measure the social capital level of undergraduate students in three cities of the Far West of Santa Catarina (south of Brazil), viz. Maravilha, São José do Cedro e São Miguel do Oeste. The survey relies on previous works by Macke (2006), Macke et al. (2010) and the evaluation model proposed by Onyx and Bullen (2000). Descriptive statistics, factorial analysis, linear regression and analysis of variance have been used, trough the software SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science). The results point out the variables related to “Participation in the community” as having the lowest levels of social capital, whereas the variables related to “Feelings of safety” and “Work connections” reach the best performance. The analysis of the results considers the sociocultural aspects of the region and aims to find elements related to the characteristics and the endogenous forces of the community.Key words: social capital, community, survey, local development.

Fumarole temperatures are the ultimate results of many processes that are encountered by deep fluids during their passage to the surface. Here, the time variations of high-temperature fumaroles acquired by continuous monitoring are presented, to show the effects of the forces that act on the system. Data acquired by continuous monitoring of fumaroles and the time relationships with the different parameters related to the activity of the volcanic system are discussed. From 1998 to 2010, the temperature and compositional changes of fumarolic gases were monitored at the same time as variations in the number of volcanoseismic events, which indicate frequent variations of energy release (heat and mass flow, and seismic strain release). Geochemical modeling applied to the volcanic system of Vulcano Island suggests that the overall expansion of magmatic gas through the fractured system is an almost iso-enthalpic process at depth, which shifts to an adiabatic process at shallow depth, where the rock permeability increases. Thus, the time variations of the fumarole temperatures reflect various physical variations of the system that can either occur at depth or close to the surface. The temperature monitoring performed in the fumarolic area of La Fossa Cone showed short-term effects related to rain events, and negligible effects related to other external agents (ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure variations). At the same time, the long-term monitoring highlighted some mean-term and long-term variations. These last are the main characters observed in the time-series, and they both appear to be related to endogenous forces that perturb the equilibrium of this complex geochemical system.